Tascam 200 VS 300/500 mixers??

[alejandra]

Hiyas,

I have a little studio with a friend.. we both put all our equipment in together. The problem is the mixer just sucks. I hate it. I've been trying to learn how to use this thing for six months now and I still don't get it plus the darn thing is so old it is noisy and unreliable. It is a Allen and Heath CMC series. It makes me want to throw things. Sometimes I get frustrated and just start pushing the g'zillions of buttons at random hoping some sound will come out of the thing. It only has eight channels and eight returns too. But it's an 8 buss anyway.

I would like to buy a new mixer and I love the Tascam 312/320 and 512/520 but the things are so effing big and heavy no one seems to want to ship them. They seem soooooo much like they would be easier to use though. I played with the 320 at school briefly before I got the courage to try and learn something about the technical stuff. I was a "chick singer" and all. It seemed friendly and big and very well built . I wanted to make it breakfast.

Are the M216 mixers as cool? They seem smaller and are selling for like $200 on ebay. A 16 buss would be nice but oh well. We need like 16 to 24 inputs eventually... could we put 2 together? Does that work?

Anyway. help help.

Alejandra

 

[regebro]

An M224 maybe? 24 inputs 4 busses. Quite small. The 200 series isn't inline, meaning that you have that number of channels and no more. The bigger ones are inline, meaning that you have one set of channels with filters, and a second set of "monitor" channels that doesn't have filters and can't be routed to the busses, effectively giving you a whole extra set of channels.

http://www3.telus.net/public/fisherr/videotips.tem/videoroomtips30.htm

They pop up on eBay from time to time.

 

[alejandra]

An M224 maybe? 24 inputs 4 busses. Quite small. The 200 series isn't inline, meaning that you have that number of channels and no more. The bigger ones are inline, meaning that you have one set of channels with filters, and a second set of "monitor" channels that doesn't have filters and can't be routed to the busses, effectively giving you a whole extra set of channels.

I'm trying to learn concepts like inline and split. I have a nice little book called Hot tip for the Home Recording Studio that is pretty helpful, unlike the allen & Heath manual for the CMC.

the 224 looks nice but I'm but I'm not sure. Ionly has 4 buss channels and to get eight we'ed hafta buy another mixer. We have two Tascam 238s linked with this amazing thing called an mts-1000 so 16 busses would be cool

thanks for the help!!!

alejandra

 

[The Ghost of FM]

The M600 was one of the only mixers TASCAM ever produced that was a 16 buss mixing console.

If you thought the 300 and 500 series were big, hold onto your horses if you ever get your roady's hands on an M600.

86" x 20" x 13"

265 pounds

Original retail $10K

Cheers!

 

[alejandra]

86" x 20" x 13"

265 pounds

Original retail $10K

Cheers!

'jole guacamole! what makes Tascam mixers so heavy? The m512 is about the same size as Kiira's (my co-studiousness friend) A&H but it weighs over twice as much.

I was looking in the archives GFM and your post up above about the M312s you have, and the picture. Cool! There is an M50 on ebay right now that looks good! It looks in good condition and the guy will pack and ship it for $100. He says the m50 is the same as an m512.

tra!

alejandra

 

[The Ghost of FM]

what makes Tascam mixers so heavy?

Metal frames, metal chassis, power supplies with massive amounts of headroom. All discrete circuitry instead of IC chips, little to no plastic parts other then knobs and fader handles, built to performance standards as apposed to building to meet a price point at retail.

The 300, 500, 600 series boards were pro in every sense of the word. Built to last and sound great.

The M50 is an older version of the M512. It is similar to the M512 but not identical in every feature. If you can find one in good condition it would be a great mixer to own and work successfully with.

Cheers!